Bound to You
by hookandgranny
Summary: *SPOILERS for Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi* Rey knew then what she had always known, what she had resisted even as she searched for a way to secure the future of the Rebellion — the future of Ben Solo, if a future like his was in any way salvageable. If there was ever the hope of something… else. Something more. She had to break Kylo Ren's heart.


She didn't expect to feel him again.

Not here. Not like this.

Not with Snoke dead and Luke… gone.

But he was there just the same, quietly projecting from the other side of the mine, running his gloved fingers over the wreckage while she boarded what little remained of the Resistance onto the Millennium Falcon.

Watching her. Waiting for her.

It was just like him to come crawling back for comfort after battle. His rage blossomed and withered in the same breath, singeing everything and everyone around him until it exposed pale, Light-starved roots of fear and anguish. She recognized that strain of loneliness in him, the same one that had coiled itself around her every night since she was a child. She had seen it flicker behind his eyes when she called him by his real name. She had heard it in the way he pleaded for her to take his hand, to forsake a galaxy that had manipulated and betrayed him at every turn.

It wasn't Kylo Ren who knelt in the dirt before her, clasping a pair of gold-plated dice that once won a smuggler his first Corellian freighter. It was Ben.

Maybe it had always been Ben.

—

 _You come from nothing. You're no one. But not to me._

This was not how she had envisioned this conversation going.

The embers crackled like fireflies around them, alighting on the bodies of slain Praetorian guards and the cauterized pieces of Snoke's corpse. In a few minutes, General Hux and the rest of the First Order would come seeking their Supreme Leader. In a few minutes, the rest of the Resistance transports would be picked off and obliterated, their fragments scattered like dust among stars.

She had to do something, anything, to make Ben understand the price she had paid to bring him to the Light. But there was too much panic in his eyes, too much blind desperation, and he stabbed her again and again with his words.

 _You come from nothing. You're no one._

It was a lie — and it wasn't. She steeled herself against the rising tide of grief, willing herself to keep from capsizing all reason. Even now, she had to beat back visions of the past: faint echoes of her father's voice mixed with Unkar Plutt's guttural assurances, the stink of Plutt's breath on her face as he dragged her out of the blockhouse, the way the sun seared her skin as she watched the receding lights of the shuttle, the sting of confusion when it grew smaller and smaller against a cloudless sky.

She came from nothing. Jakku was nothing, no more than a carcass of rotting spacecraft and veritable gold mine for the thieves and traders who scavenged its remains. Her parents were nothing, careless and dead, forgotten drunks who wasted away on a planet that no longer felt like home.

But he was wrong about one thing. She wasn't no one. Not to the Rebellion. Not to Finn, or Han Solo, or even Luke Skywalker.

Not to Ben.

She met his gaze and saw his eyes soften in the firelight. For a moment, she could feel his fingertips touching hers, warm and tender and soft against her skin. She could see his future: his silhouette against a cold sky, Leia Organa embracing her son, the electric flash of blue kyber crystal springing from his hands. Back on Ahch-To, there had been hope. There could be hope again.

 _Don't do this, Ben. Please don't go this way._

She reached for him, reflecting a fraction of his naked, wanton need, and she felt his heart go out to her. She had seen inside him: not just his visions of power, but his perpetual longing for connection and comfort. For her.

 _Together. We can rule together._ Luke didn't know Ben the way she had; the kinship knitted from loneliness and misunderstanding, the feeling of finding someone who, like her, had thought himself alone and abandoned in the universe, the way he could look at her and know in an instant what she was thinking, the way he looked at her and she knew he'd follow her anywhere. They way they wrestled in tandem between Light and Dark, their souls cracked along the same fault lines by the same all-seeing, all-binding Force.

 _Ben._

 _Rey._

And just as clearly, she could see everything he couldn't. Cannon fire on Rebel transports, Finn lying motionless in the medbay, Luke stumbling back in the darkness, eyes wide and helpless under the sky-blue glare of his own lightsaber. His voice against the rain: This is not going to go the way you think. And Ben, standing toe-to-toe with her in the elevator, whispering in her ear: When the moment comes, I know you will be the one to turn.

She knew then what she had always known, what she had resisted even as she searched for a way to secure the future of the Rebellion — the future of Ben Solo, if a future like his was in any way salvageable. If there was ever the hope of something… else. Something more.

She had to break Kylo Ren's heart.

—

The boarding ramp pulled up and clicked into place. Plumes of salt and blood-red soil kicked up as the Falcon launched into Crait's atmosphere, briefly dangling over the quiet, lumbering husks of First Order AT-M6s before Chewbacca knocked a couple of open-mouthed porgs from the controls and punched into hyperdrive.

The universe was still and pure and safe — for now. Rey palmed the pieces of broken lightsaber, tracing the jagged edges of crystal and metal with her thumb. It hadn't been a clean break; it never was. She couldn't shake the image of Ben's face, newly-crestfallen when she reached for the saber in his hand, pulling it toward her with every ounce of strength she had left.

It was worse still to remember the way it splintered under their combined force, and the way he looked at her then, as if she had been no more trustworthy than the Supreme Leader himself. The way he stopped looking at her when she waved her fingers over his face and he fell, motionless, to the ground. The way she crouched over him, brushing her lips against his forehead before running away. The way she hoped he would still rise to be the savior the Rebellion so desperately needed.

 _Powerful Light meets Powerful Darkness._

She stepped into the pilot's seat and strapped herself in. Chewie let out an approving roar, something about how insufferable these birds were and where were they going and could they swing by Ahch-To and return these creatures to the island or maybe even just the middle of the ocean. Behind her, there was Leia Organa and Poe Dameron and Finn and Rose, the heart of the Resistance, those who still sought refuge and purpose under the shadow of a crumbling First Order.

She would be the one to lead them through it all. Rey, the scavenger, the nobody from nowhere, the daughter of the Rebellion. She would carry the mantle of Luke Skywalker, spreading his legend from planet to planet, resurrecting the Jedi Order and restoring balance to the galaxy.

There was only one way to finish what she'd started: standing side by side with the progeny of Darth Vader, son of General Leia Organa, carbon copy of infamous smuggler Han Solo, pupil of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, warrior in his own right and the other half of her heart. She reached out again, feeling the air shift around her as the Force called back through the stars.

 _I'm coming for you, Ben Solo._

 _We have a universe to save._


End file.
